25 Surprising Facts About Psychology

When you tell someone that you're taking, teaching, or practicing psychology, you're likely to get the reaction that "it's all common sense." However, having taught introductory psychology for over 30 years, I've accumulated an armamentarium of facts to teach students that challenge this myth about psychology's knowledge base.

See if you can "psych" out these psych facts yourself:*

1. Freud initially only sold 700 copies of the Interpretation of Dreams.

Freud actually is studied/taught in psych classes. I'm a psychology major, and Freud's psychoanalytic theory, though not widely accepted, was a major contribution to the field, particularly in psychological development.

I posted the links to my previous blogs; the point of this was to get the facts out there in an easily digestible form rather than write an academic piece. You should definitely check those other links as well as other of my blog postings on related topics. Sorry if you're disappointed. Best, Susan

Van Gogh was most probably bipolar, getting paid for something you like does not equate to less creativity, positive reinforcement works much better than punishment according to my psych University text books, and people who frequent fast food outlets don't really care about healthy choices at all.

The comment about jobs and creativity is so interesting! I would have thought the complete opposite. Is there a study or story on your blog with more information on that? The link went to a story that was great but more about food choices....

That link did go to the "healthy eating" post. However, I can answer your question. The phenomenon is called "motivational crowding out," and was based on a study of creativity in children. Since then, researchers have refined the theory and say that as long as you feel a sense of self-determination in your job, your creativity may not suffer. The key is to feel inner-directed. But you've raised a great question and now I think I will cover this more completely either in my next post or one soon after that. Stay tuned and thanks for writing! Best, Susan

I knew most of these. I was surprised about the calorie chart though. Logically, I think, if you saw how many calories you were eating you would pick a healthier option because a higher number means less healthy compared to other food options unless it is an instance and a pattern of "the higher the number, the better it is."

Same. Every mention of him in a psychology course I've taken was to get into the history of it and the psychodynamic view of it, then to flat out bash him, his outdated theories (especially his "penis envy"), and Freudian jokes (we also loved to joke about Horney and womb envy.) Now, in every other subject I've had that Freud was mentioned, it was always that "he was a genius and is never wrong!" Shows how much the other subjects don't pay attention to the subject of psychology.

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